


Pinocchio

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-28
Updated: 2007-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:58:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Was she a girl or some crafted thing they should all fear?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pinocchio

It was one of those rare nights when Jayne couldn't sleep. It happened a lot since Miranda, and not just to him. The whole crew at some point had their sleepless nights and ghostly wanderings about the ship. Jayne liked to think he was above that kind of thing just because he knew it wasn't any of their _gorram_ fault the chips fell where they had. He was just the ship's merc, not any glorified planner. He could let it go, because sometimes the plan just failed and people died. It was the way of the 'verse.

Some nights, those rare nights when Jayne couldn't sleep, he thought of the Reavers behind the blast doors, the roars and the screams and the sound of metal on flesh. That was the sound that truly scared him.

He gathered up his best girl. Vera hadn't had a good cleaning in quite a while, and going through the motions helped to calm down the noise in his head. He brought his equipment to the kitchen, where he could spread out his best cloth on the table and break his girl down into parts. They moved with smooth precision, like clockwork gears, and a working Vera was a happy Vera. She would shoot straight and save them all.

Spit, polish, shine. Repetition dulled the roar of screams in his ears.

He didn't know when he knew she was there. She was a ghost in the corner of his eye, a waif in a thin white slip and nothing else. Her feet were bare on the cold tile, her hair streaming down long and loose. Her eyes were haunted, deep pools of darkness.

"Huh. Couldn't sleep, neither?" he asked, trying to be civil. The girl was still crazy, no matter what she told her demented doctor brother.

She remained where she was, hands open at her sides. "Am I a real girl?" she asked, voice soft and barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"I'm a clockwork girl, a mass of cogs and wires, built to specific purpose. I'm a tool to be used and bent, applied with specific instruction for mass effect. I'm what they built me to be, and I can't shake loose the construct they made me from."

Jayne blinked. Stupid moonbrain River-girl was trying to confuse him again. He turned back to his work, doggedly shining the trigger guard.

"You have a girl's name," River whispered, eyes large and fearful. "You would understand it, wouldn't you? You would know if I'm a real girl or not."

Jayne blew out the breath he hadn't known he was holding. "Lookit, you. Talk to your useless brother. He's the doc around these parts."

"He plies me with medications and Kaylee laughs and pretends I am true flesh and bone. The captain and his commander both give me wide berth when they don't think I see them. The Companion cannot look me in the eye. They all lie, they say they don't fault me for the past events that unfolded." She bit her lips nervously. "You don't like me," she whispered after a long moment. "You wouldn't lie to me, then."

Jayne carefully put down Vera's trigger guard. "So what _feng le_ notion you got now?"

"Tell me the truth, Jayne. Am I a real girl? Or am I a construct they put together with gears and triggers, someone they shaped merely to look like a girl? Am I built of wood and paint, or true flesh and bone?"

He shifted in his seat so that he fully faced her. Legs splayed open for balance, Jayne considered her words. The others did shy away from her at times. She piloted the ship like Wash's ghost lived inside of her. She spoke in riddles at times. Her eyes caught the nuance that no one wanted to admit to. The others were right to be afraid, because her mind worked in ways that they couldn't begin to understand. If anything, Jayne understood human nature. People feared what they couldn't understand, and people would do almost anything to make their little world make sense. He knew he certainly worked that way.

River stood before him, eyes wide like a doll's. She didn't look like she could wield a blade, let alone take down an army of Reavers on her own. Jayne remembered her exhausted stance, the pause for the command. She would have taken the Alliance down if she had been ordered to, even if it killed her in the process. She could take orders better than any soldier, because it didn't matter what her personal outcome was. River could think in riddles, and could think of the final goal instead of her personal wants.

"Take that off," Jayne said, wondering if she would actually do it.

He was stunned to silence when she slid the slip from off of her shoulders. She was bare to him now, skin dimpling with gooseflesh in the cold. She watched the play of his facial muscles, trying to read his expression.

"You look like a girl to me," Jayne said, voice catching slightly.

"Am I wood and paint? Am I clockwork creation made to look like a girl?" Her head bowed slightly, as if she was afraid to look him in the eye. "You don't like me. You won't lie if I'm not a real girl, after all."

Jayne stood, his hand gripping the back of the chair tightly. The roar of the Reavers was rising in the back of his mind. He could feel the terror of that day rising in his gullet, and he nearly choked on it. River shivered in front of him, but made no move to cover herself from his searching gaze.

Was she a girl or some crafted thing they should all fear?

She answered his unspoken command to come closer. She stepped over her slip and came within arm's reach of him. Her head was still bowed, inviting examination. Jayne reached for River almost without thinking, and it was almost as if he knew what she was thinking.

She was a body in motion, suspended animation. Her skin was cold; she would never be warm again. His fingers pressed deeply into her flesh, marking her. There would be bruises in the morning, she knew. She would have to hide them, and he would smirk at her over breakfast. She would grin and bear it, play the psychotic little sister a while longer. He would fight her, scratch her, mark her. He had long fingernails that scratched; they belied his assertions that he was a man despite the girl's name. It was all right; she was a flowing thing, giver of life, connector of oceans. She wasn't a girl herself.

Wordlessly, he bent her over the part of the kitchen table not covered with parts of Vera. Jayne dropped his trousers and filled her tight body to the hilt. She made choking sounds of pain, hands gripping the table tight. River didn't complain about the discomfort of her position, the sharp strands of pain threading through her. Jayne's fingers dug into her hips, and he thought for an eerie moment that her bones were hollow. He would snap her to pieces, and they would be scattered across the table, bound up with Vera's pieces. He would have to oil her and put her back together, the clockwork girl she feared that she was.

When Jayne finished, he tidied himself as best as he could. River awkwardly pushed herself up from the table. There was a mark that looked like Vera's trigger guard on her stomach, and purple finger-shaped bruises were already rising along her hips and arms.

Vaguely ashamed, Jayne reached out and touched River's arm. "It only hurts the first time, you know," he said, voice soft and hushed. "It's what marks you as a woman."

She looked up, eyes dark and empty. Jayne's stomach bottomed out from under him. "Of all the things they see, a woman is not one of them."

"Only a real girl becomes a woman, yeah?"

He tried not to think about the blood he tore from her body, or the roar of remembered Reavers in the back of his head. He tried not to think of the bleak expression on her face, and tried not to feel ashamed of how he had made her first time feel.

Jayne wasn't used to guilt. It burned his throat with acid bile.

"I should thank you," she whispered. She didn't move and she hardly blinked. Her shivers made him afraid. She looked ready to shatter.

"Why? You said I'd be the only one to tell you the truth."

"Because you told me the truth. I never had to like it."

"What do you mean?"

"If I'm a girl, I'm accountable. I'm responsible." Her voice wavered, and it sounded as if she was about to cry. "I'm the thing they fear, and they know it's only a matter of time before I turn into something they loathe."

"Hey, now. It's not that bad."

"Yes, it is."

River turned away, and Jayne caught her by the arm. The roar of the screams dimmed a bit when he touched her. "Look. It's too soon, yeah? We're just not dealing very well, you know? It's hard to think around the grief." Jayne didn't realize that he was massaging her arm slightly with his thumb. He could feel the lithe muscle beneath her skin, and remembered the graceful arc of her punches at the Maidenhead. "You ain't no clockwork thing. You're not like my gun on the table, all right? You're a real girl, and you're a woman now."

When he let her go, she picked up the slip and held it to her chest. River couldn't meet his eyes, and he no longer could tell what she was thinking.

"Will you promise never to lie to me?" Her voice warbled, a more fragile thing than Jayne had ever heard before. "If the time comes when they're too afraid to tell me the truth, will you be able to do it? Will you tell me if I'm the creation they think I am? If I turn into a thing of wood and paint and strings, you need to tell me. You'll have to cut the strings."

Jayne thought of the piles of bodies beyond the blast doors, the blood dripping from the axe River had been holding. He thought of the guns trained on her back, that she had been ready to try and take the Alliance down with her.

"I promise," Jayne said, voice hoarse. "I won't ever lie to you, River."

She turned and looked at him, eyes shining with unshed tears. "Thank you."

"You are a girl, you know."

Her smile was fragile and heartbreaking. "I must be. It wouldn't hurt so much if I wasn't."

Jayne watched her descend back into the passenger dorms. Blinking, he sat back down at the kitchen table. He looked at the puzzle pieces that made up Vera, his very best gun. He had always called her his very best girl, his strongest girl.

Now he knew it was actually River.

 

The End.


End file.
